Post your polyphasic sleep logs here

[aslkdzm]

I suggest people can also take the alternative of 6x30 mins.
The distribution of the sleeping time will be 2am, 6am, 10am, 2pm, 6pm, and 10pm. But it seems rather difficult. 2am, 6am, 2pm and 10pm are quite feasible, but for the majority, 10am and 6pm are their primetimes, so this timetable is rather hard to achieve, unless you have great flexibility in your time.

[jorel314]

Here's a list of current polyphasic bloggers that you might find helpful.

http://polyphasic.dyndns.org

[aslkdzm]

Sorry, Internet is somehow inaccesible to me nowadays since I was staying outside, so I will post detailed updates later.

[tyre]

Just wondering if you've stuck with living polyphasic and how it's going. I really appreciate yours, and everyone else that has shared their experiences with polyphasic (and all the other variants) sleep.

[aslkdzm]

I'm greatly sorry for that, I will be sitting for my year end exam in november, so it would be quite dangerous it I try this out now.
Furthermore, the adaptation phase will costs me too much time and thus shorten my revision time.

It would be safer for me if I postphone this experiment until after my year final.

[thefictionxwelive]

*Ahem* Sorry about disappearing for five months. I, erm.. do that.
Well, my first attempt at polyphasic sleep only lasted a couple weeks. I've had quite a few more attempts, but less time to adapt now that I'm back in school. If I want to get things done, though, I need to do this. And I certainly have a lot to get done.

So, my polyphasic (dymaxion) sleep schedule is as follows:
Sleep from three-thirty to four, and from nine-thirty to ten, am and pm.
There is an exception during school for the nine-thirty am nap.
I have plenty of work that needs doing, just not the time for it. Hopefully, I can get things done this way.

I'll update this time. : )

[curiousalexa]

Welcome back Pan!

It's interesting to go through this thread and watch the activity wax and wane over the years.

I just discovered stevepavlina.com in December 2008, specifically via polyphasic sleep. I am currently on the 5th day of transition to Uberman. I would love to hear more from Steve/others about your experiences with polyphasic sleeping, pro and con, current and past.

Steve, it's been several years since you went polyphasic. Have you thought about doing so again? You had commented back then about the idea of having a night-family, which in conjunction with your current polyamory explorations could make for some interesting insights.

[lemuria]

I was doing fine. and on day 7 I thought to myself "why don't try not going to sleep, at the very least sleep 30 minutes per day. I know many people complain that they become sick by not sleeping for a long time... " despite the overwhelming evidence I still went on coz I'm curious, who knows, maybe I'm the exception...
but it only took 2 days to give me headaches and before I know it, I have a cold...LOL ... OK, so that didn't work. those 2 days didn't go to waste though, I watched the Simpsons on those 2 days
I guess 'they' were 'right' all along, oh well. onto the next challenge that will make me even weirder than I am now...
I had to revert back to monophasic in 2 days to recover myself, but planning to stay monophasic this week because I have a driving test this weekend.

[highvoltage]

I'm raising this thread from the dead. It's a good thread with lots of great information on x-phasic sleeping.

Mainly, I'm posting to this thread because I'd like to try out biphasic sleeping. Right now, I'm pretty much on a free-running schedule, but I always wake up on my own around 10:00 AM. I'll go to be whenever, but I always wake up at about the same time. That sounds great, right? Well, the problem is that I go to bed anywhere between 23:00 and 02:00 the night before, so I sleep somewhere in the range of 8-11 hours a day (usually on the high side of that).

It's a huge waste of time, so I'm going to do something about it. Starting tomorrow night, Friday March 20th, I'm going to split my sleep up into two chunks with the goal of reducing my total time spent unconscious. I'll be taking one 90 min. nap in the evening around 19:30, and one 4.5 hour core sleep from about 02:00-06:30.

Next week is my Spring Break at my university, so I'll be able to go through the adaptation phase while on break. I can't start today because of some homework/papers due tomorrow. I won't take a nap tomorrow, but I'll jump right into the 4.5 hour sleep on Friday night (early Sat. morning, really).

I need to have a place to post my progress/failures. I don't really have anyone IRL to hold me accountable, so I'll use this forum. Hopefully I can breathe some new life into this great thread, in addition to finding some kind of accountability for my own biphasic trial.

EDIT: After further consideration, I think I will start tonight rather than tomorrow night. I won't take a nap, but I'll stay up until 02:00 and get up at 06:30 tomorrow morning. Then I'll take the nap tomorrow evening, so tomorrow will be my first full day, rather than Saturday.

[highvoltage]

I said I wouldn't take a nap today, but as it happens I started to get kind of sleepy around 18:30 tonight, so I decided I might as well just take my nap and get started. I went to bed a little after 6:30 PM, and it wasn't long before I drifted off. I woke up after 7:30, but I lain there until nearly 8:00.

So I'm off to a start.

I still don't know if 6 hours sleep per 24 will be enough. Coming from a monophasic background, I find I need at least 7.5 hours to feel good during the day, and that's a minimum. Although like I said in my previous post, I usually get more than that. I'm skeptical about being able to perform at peak capacity on 6 hours of sleep per day, especially since I'm a Physics and Applied Mathematics double major and sleep is critical in being able to succeed in those fields. Well, I guess I'll find out. At the very worst, I'll end up bumping my core sleep to 6 hours instead of 4.5, for a total of 7.5 hours/day if 6 hours proves too short.

Anyway, now I just need to stay up until 02:00, and get up at 06:30 tomorrow morning for day 1.

Day 0: Nap: 18:30-19:50.

[highvoltage]

Core sleep: 1:30-7:30.

I decided last night I am going for a 6 hour core sleep for the first few days at least, so I don't shock my body too much. Judging by how hard it was for me to get up when my alarm went off, I'd say it was probably a good idea. So far so good, though. If I start adapting quickly to this schedule, I'll drop down to 4.5 hour core early next week.

[silicon toad2000]

I'll join ya, well I did join you but I didn't know it.
I had a break from bi phasic. Chose to visit friends sometimes in the time I would have been having my nap.

Night 1: Lay down for the nap about 8:45pm. Still awake at 9:15pm so I got up and just had my normal sleep that night.

Night 2: Napped 9:00pm to 10:30pm. Woke up very thirsty. Core sleep 2:30 to 7am. Didn't fall asleep very quickly during my core sleep and woke up a few times until 3:30am. Felt much more alert the next day, no mid afternoon drowsiness.

Night 3: Napped 8:30pm to 10pm. Moved the nap earlier to combat the difficulty in falling alseep for my core sleep. Core sleep 2:30am to 7am. No trouble falling asleep for my core sleep.

[highvoltage]

Core: 01:30-07:30
Nap: 19:00-20:15
-------------------
Total sleep: 7:15

Notes: I had a pretty hard time getting up this morning at 07:30, which I attribute to it being nearly 3 hours before my previous normal waking time. I did get up and didn't oversleep, though. I had pretty good energy all day, and wasn't tired up until about 18:30. I fell asleep for my nap faster than I did yesterday, probably due to the decreased amount of sleep last night, but I don't think I slept very deeply. I woke for a while in the middle of the nap, so I know I probably didn't get a whole sleep cycle in, but I did remember a dream.

[silicon toad2000]

well it fell in a heap so far.
I had to catch up with a friend this weekend and our combined schedules left us only the time I had set asside for my nap free. I chose to catch up with my friend instead of napping and had a 6 hour core sleep on night 4.
Night 5 I lay down for my nap and was still awake after half an hour so I abandoned the exercise and had a 5 hour core sleep.
Night 6 I napped a little too successfully and slept right through.
Since then I have not been able to nap again.
Tonight will be night 8. Will try again and maybe take some additional steps to wind down before the nap.
I think this has been part of the problem. Nap times seem to have suddenly surprised me. I have been busy all evening and suddenly I'm in a rush to get to sleep.

[HereNow]

Hi all,

I am new here, but wanted to share my experience with polyphasic sleeping so far. I have a 9-6 job and can't afford to take vacation for the first days so I decided I will try biphasic sleep. I did that for 3-4 days but found that I couldn't fall asleep for the evening nap and also I had to move it later and later since after work when I am supposed to be taking it, there are errands to be ran. So there goes that attempt. Overall I didn't feel that tired during that period so i figured I could try out another schedule without taking a break. then I came across the Everyman, I really think I can make that work. With biphasic, I wasn't really sure that the time gained balances the inconvinience of spending 90 min asleep right around dinner time.
I am now on my 5-6th day of everyman, i don't really count the days. Although I probably should... My schedule is:
Core sleep: 2-5am
Naps: 11:00-11:20am, 4:00-4:30pm, 9:30-10:00pm

Unfortunately, I overslept twice already. One time, I decided to let go and have a beer with a friend on a friday and then went for my evening nap...well, I woke up at 5am. The other time, again on an evening nap I ended up sleeping 90min instead of 20-30min. I find that 20 min nap is better for me than 30min nap. When I can't go to sleep for a nap, I just still lay there. In fact, actual sleeping time during nap is currently more like 10 min Maybe that will improve. I generally feel ok though, sleep dep is not too bad, besides I am kinda strange in the way that I find sleep dep can be entertaining cause it puts you in this weird mental state. When I really feel sleepy and can't think which was usually after core sleep in the first few days, I'd watch TV, the mind-killer.
So I guess that's all so far. I will keep you posted.

P.S. about the day-time naps. I sleep in my car. I asked my boss for 2 half-hour brakes and to compensate I come in an hour earlier.

Any other Everyman out there? Long term, or just now adapting? I got a lot of my info about this stuff from Steve Pavlina's blog and also Puredoxyk's website. Both fantastic resources. I am grateful I stumbled upon them.

A few last bits that may or may not be relevant. I am vegetarian and I quit caffeine because of the desire to go polyphasic. If you told me 6-months ago that will not eat meat and go without coffee, I would have laughed at you. Unbelievable, how convinced I was that I can't go without either one of the above. I guess you don't know until you try...

Thanks for reading if you made it all the way down here.

[dharmajanitor]

I've started with the Uberman sleep schedule on July 1st 2009, the nap hours of my schedule are as follows:

02:00 am & pm
06:00 am & pm
10:00 am & pm
-> 20 minutes per nap

I first started out with the Everyman schedule 2 days prior to July but quickly gave that up because I couldn't even hold that schedule the very first day.
I then quickly decided to "full hardcore".
The decision woth only logical for me because one of the main reasons for switching to a polyphasic sleep schedule for me was so that I have more time to learn for my upcoming exams.
Normally - on a monophasic schedule - I'd go to bed very late (around 1-2 am) since I'm a nite owl and I always had trouble falling to sleep. Usually I'd have around 11-15 hours waking time from which only 8-10 hours were productive.
The rest of the time I'd either get too tired to concentrate on learning or simply didn't feel like learning.

So I thought having a polyphasic schedule could help me with a lot of my problems:

• Falling asleep more easily
• Feeling more refreshed and energized after sleeping
• Having a day with 22 hours awake time could certainly give at least a minimum of around 15 hours

Regarding the pessimism of my last point (only 15h productive work time): My motto is "Hope for nothing, plan for the worst".^^

Note:
I differentiate days on this schedule differently than on the monophasic schedule, i.e. for me Day 1 didn't end at midnight but only then when the sun came out again.
But for clarification let's say for this log a day starts AFTER 6am and ends at 6am the next day.
So essentially I'm just pushing "midnight" to 6am. I feel this is a better way to differentiate between days, because this way I better know how much days have passed.
First there are the light hours of day X, then there are the dark hours of day X.
And as soon as the sun comes out again, THEN it's day Y.
I hope this doesn't sound too confusing, it's pretty easy and actually comes quite naturally if you sleep on a polyphasic pattern.

Alright, let's get to it then.

DAY 1
Ok, my first nap I started in the middle of day one at 2 pm (I had other naps from the transition of the Everyman schedule before, so I didn't feel like "cheating").
I can't remember every details from that day but I can say that the time between the 2am and 6am naps was very difficult, but nothing I couldn't handle.

Regarding the naps I didn't fall asleep as soon as I laid down, but eventually I could calm myself enough to get to sleep.
It took maybe 2 naps to finally remember that I dreamt (but not what).

DAY 2
Again nothing special and nor real problems, until the night.
I very quickly recognized my "Hell hours" are the time between the 2am and 6am naps.
This time it was really hard to keep awake, my first zombie-state experience.
So I went outside and kept myself busy with walking and listening to fast and energizing music.
After my 6am nap it didn't really get better until shortly before my 10am nap.
From that point on I didn't have to fight sleep again for the rest of the daytime (which was day 3 already, woot!).

DAY 3
I can't really say that I was capable to do anything that needed concentration until now, but I already expected that and know that this probably won't change until I'm adapted to the schedule. During the whole day I always had to think about the coming hell hours of the night and actually feared them a little bit.^^
But I kept myself motivated and said to myself that this will prove to myself how strong of a will I can have, which could also give me some self-confidence.
This time I already felt very drowsy after my 10pm nap but not that I'd have to fight the sleep like with these damn eye-shutter moments in the hell hours.
Although I was tired already I could easily get up after my 2am nap, but shortly after that I transformed to a zombie again.
To fight it I had to get out again. I took a little something to snack with me. Nothing heavy, mind you, only some crackers. Since it rained a couple hours before it was refreshingly cool and a light mist hung around everything.
I particularly was fond of the cool temperatures since were I live we are in the deepest of summer.
I found a nice and calm spot with a bit nature around me and sat down, eating some of my crackers and thinking about some stuff. Although this was the worst zombie time since day 1, I surprisingly felt no tiredness at all during the time sitting there. It was a very refreshing and contemplative 3 hours.
I made my way back then and took my next nap at 6am, convinced that I would get easier from now on.

DAY 4
But that positive feeling immediatly vanished when I woke up after my 6am nap. And this was paricularly... strange.
The reason me thinking that was that I DID dream, but directly after I was woken up by my alarm, I felt like somebody had rammed a pipe through my head and the inner side of my eye sockets were made of sand paper.
It felt like waking from a very deep sleep state, but that couldn't have been the case, since I am 100% positive I was in the middle of a dream when the alarm went of.
I even remembered the exact thing I was doing when suddenly I heard the alarm. Then my consciusness immediately was pulled back from the "dream-scene" and was awake.
But why did I feel like having a bad night of partying behind me?
I read somewhere that we don't necessarily dream only in the REM-phase but probably in other phases too, like in the Slow-Phase Sleep. Maybe I dreamed in said phase and awoke from that?
Would certainly explain why I felt the worst so far when awakening from a nap.
But if you really only dream in the REM-phase then I'm really wondering what in the hell happened?
Maybe all the accumulated sleep-deprivation hit me suddenly then? I have really no idea.
If anybody has a plausible theory, please let me know.

Btw. until now I always was able to get to sleep for each nap in around 1-4 minutes. And I didn't oversleep so far! Always got up after the alarm sounded.

Anyways, after I woke up at this time, I knew that all the other zombie-hell-times before were NOTHING compared to this. My body really... REALLY badly wanted to sleep.
Still I tried to remain resilient.
But believe me, this was absolutely not easy. My eyes uncontrollably fluttered, even though I splashed ice water in my face and on my arms. I stared directly into the brightest light, walked around, even spoke with my body and told him to f***ing obey me! There would be no sleep, damn it!
This felt like hours of torture. I couldn't imagine anything more torturing like that.
I just stepped into the next circle of hell.
But when I looked how much time has passed, it wasn't even half an hour since I awoke, OMG!
Many times my eyes closed while I was walking around for only a split second, I simply couldn't do anything about it.
And during that split second I imagined I was walking around at a different corner of my room, when in fact I was walking around somewhere else. The result of these split-second "dreams" was that I walked against some walls and other stuff.
So it wasn't really dreaming, more like hallucinations that made my brain think it I walked along a hallway, rather then against a wall.

What can I say, this was the first time I seriously wanted to give up. I asked myself what good is it when I absolutely have no progress? I can't wait another week, because I really have to get started learning soon.
So I was sitting down on my bed, took my alarm clock and said to myself "F**k it, I lost...".
Still sitting there with the alarm clock in my hand, I suddenly got defiant and angry. "No... no I WON'T give up! I can do this!"
So I walked around again, splashed myself with ice water look at the lights, did virtually everything.
But that damn pipe in my head and the sand paper that made my eyes shut all the time just didn't go away.

Rather that giving up I decided to take an extra nap.
When I started the Uberman schedule I read that even Steve Pavlina (my Uberman god^^) took some extra naps in the adaptation phase, but I wanted to prevent that, since I thought I'd adapt more quickly then.
After experiencing this near-coma-sleep-deprivation though I just wasn't able to hold myself together.
It was virtually physically impossible to hold myself together during this state, at least for a duration 3 hours!
No, I just knew I was gonna fall asleep sooner or later (sooner!) so at least I wanted to be in control when that happens.
So as I already said I decided to take an extra 20 minute nap.
I don't really know when exatly this was, but it couldn't have been any later than 6:45am or so, since time stretched ridiculously during my awake-coma-torture.
I was really a suffering piece of misery, it was just unbearable. If I beleived in hell then it would be like this, only that you wouldn't be able to fall asleep... :P

And then - I wasn't really surprised - it happened for the first time: I overslept.
I woke up around 12 o'clock, so I slept for about 5-6 hours.
What can I say? I just thought an emotionless "... ♥♥♥♥♥".
Was that the end of it? I mean was I back at the beginning? Did I really have to begin at day 1 and go through all of this again?
This was when I thought about giving up for real, just out of resignation and tiredness (mental tiredness that is).
Because if I really had to start from the beginning, then how long would it take me to finally get adapted?
If I need until the end of the month then I would've actually lost a whole month I could've used to prepare for my exams (which are in September).
I just felt betrayed somehow, disappointed. Wanted to throw the towel.

(-cut-)

[dharmajanitor]

(-continued-)
But quickly after some consideration I thought: Other people have overslept, made extra naps AND did eventally get thorugh the adaptation period. And still rather quickly as well, like Steve Pavlina for example.

I mean I didn't slip up so far, not the slightest actually. No oversleeping, no extra naps, etc.
Until the day 3/4 mark! So even though this is a little setback in itself, isn't it also a little success overall since it only occured now? Hmm, I don't really know, but nonetheless:
I continued!

As of this writing it's exactly... 3:35 pm, roughly 3 1/2 hours since I woke up from "the incidence".
I took my 2pm nap as usual, although it naturally took a few minutes more to fall asleep.
But I dreamed regardless, so I guess this is a good sign.
I really don't know what to expect this night, but I try to manage no matter what happens.
Since I don't want to oversleep anymore, the moment I feel like last night before 6am, I'll plan for an extra 20 minute MUCH EARLIER than the last time.

Since I never did polyphasic sleeping before I wonder how long it will take for me to finally don't have to fight sleep at the nighttimes anymore. From all the blogs of the successful it sounds like it "only" needs roughly a week.
But I didn't feel any progress therefore I have some questions to all of you who ever succeeded with Uberman:

• Will the nighttime zombie-sleepiness fade gradually over the days, or will there be some magical boundary after a few days where it suddenly turns from zombie-sleepiness to only light sleepiness (but none you have to fight hard against anymore)?
• How long will it take until I can actually lean at night? And I'm speaking of being able to comprehend mathematics and IT stuff. If it needs weeks to be able to conentrate for something like that at night, then... well that wouldn't be what I expected.^^
• Will my oversleeping of 5-6 hours from ca. 6-12am have a huge impact on my adaptation phase? Am I at square one?

And finally:

• Do you have the slightest idea what in the hell that was after my 6am nap?

Why did I on the one hand awake from dreaming but on the other hand feel the worst so far in terms of sleep-deprivation right after awakening?
I even had the feeling that a specific part of my brain began to hurt when I forced my eyes open through willpower.
Oh man, I guess I now know how narcolepsy feels if you would fight it.^^

Alrighty, it's 3:50 now, I feel like a 5 from a scale of 1-10. Not really able to concentrate on anything mentally, but not particularly tired either. It's still roughly 2 hours before my next nap.

Even though I had this lapsus, I still consider this DAY 4. Not an optimal day 4, but still.
I hope everything was understandable, if anything was unclear or you have a question in general, don't hesitate to ask.
Wish me luck, especially to get though this damn adaptation phase.

Greetings,
Edward

P.S.: And apologies for the long post, I had one of my rare "flow momoments" and couldn't stop typing. I hope you don't mind.

[dharmajanitor]

Hey all,
just wanted to update my status since my faux pas from yesterday (DAY 4).

DAY 5
Since I almost wanted to give up yesterday at one of my worst zombie moments and after that even overslept, everything seemed fine this night.
In fact this was the first night ever without as much as a mild tiredness.
At first, when I woke up at 2am I was insanely tired again and wanted to end it right there again, can you believe it?
I told myself that it just wouldn't make any sense to keeo this going if every night would be torturing and I don't seem to make any progress.
So I sat at the edge of my bed hating the situation and pondering if I really should quit or not (while feeling like ♥♥♥♥♥).
But then something changed inside of me, I became angered and defiant.
So I gritted my teeth and stood up to stay awake and fight the drowsiness as best I could, even though it'd be a torture.

And now the most wonderous thing happened:
As soon as I stood up and walked about 3 steps... my zombie-tiredness completely vanished !?
And, as I mentioned already at the beginning of this post, the result of this 2am-6am cycle was that I was completely and without any effort... awake!
I just couldn't believe it, I was so happy that I went outside talking a refreshing walk and watching the sun come out.

Since I'm always trying not to draw conclusions too quickly (especially if they are too good to be true) I thought about why this was and I came up with 2 explanations. A positive one and a pessimistic one.

The first obvious one would be:
Adaptation just began to kick in!
That would be the best thing if that's really what's going on and it would give me a TREMENDOUS motivational push.

The second (pessimistic) explanation:
As I overslept for 5-6 hours on DAY 4 this could've just given me enough energy to "make through the night" more effortlessly.
So it could very well be that the next night won't be as pleasant as today.
But this time I allow myself to have some hope.

One argument I came up with to support the adaptation-is-kicking-in explanation would be that even though I overslept it didn't happen during the cycle from 2am-6am, but during 6am-12am. Well, whatever the case may be tomorrow I will be the wiser.

As for now I felt a little bit groggy after my 6am nap but a few minutes later remained the light tiredness from before without any torturous experiences.
I think I'll experiment a little bit with the lengths of my naps. Yesterday I've watched a vlog from this (seemingly) french guy who also tried the uberman schedule and made interesting videos, even showing himself in zombie-mode and giving a few insights along with that.
The most interesting thing I got from his videos was that after about 2 weeks he suddenly found something that finally got him to adapt:
The solution for him was just 2 Minutes... 2 Minutes!
He previously slept for... I think it was 23 Minutes and then, after 2 weeks, when he added 2 more minutes he suddenly would wake up everytime and would mostly be a little tired, but no zombie-mode anymore!

So there you have it, sometimes it's the small things that can make a huge difference.

I felt a little more tired an hour ago, but it's still bearable.
My next nap (10am) is coming up and if anything deviates from the positive feelings after the naps I had so far then I'll update this post.
If there won't be anything special then I'll be back with my report of DAY 6 (especially to report if the nighttime went as smooth as the last time).

So long,
Edward

[Aleksander Krstic]

I tried polyphasic sleep once, but failed because I couldn't find any place to sleep at school.

[dharmajanitor]

DAY 6

• 2pm: feeling better directly after getting up than before
• 6pm: A little tired after getting up, but nothing seriouse. Went away after 1 minute.
• 10pm: Felt refreshed after getting up, around midnight felt the onset of fatigue. But since I'm not yet evenly adapted throughout each of the daily and nightly cycles, no wonders here.
  That'll be some sort of calibration process my body still has to go through until the difference between the night cycles
  and the day cycles will almost be not worth mentioning anymore.
• 2am: As I was getting more and more tired by the minute, I was happy to finally get this nap.

After waking up from that I felt veeeery tired again. Barely could keep my eyes open.
So I quickly put on my shoes and went outside for a walk.
But it wouldn't get better, I was in Zombie-mode again... drowsy, eyelid-fluttering and still 3 hours to go! *sigh*
So what did I do? Well believe it or not, I started to make push-ups on an abandoned parking lot.
And I felt immediately better, the rush of blood did the trick. But that only lasted for about 2 minutes, then the eyelids fluttered again.
Oh my, it was like hell again, I couldn't believe it. I just didn't know how to get past 3 hours in this state!
You see, The last time I succeeded and got to my 6am nap, but failed to wake up after that.
So this time I thought it might be best to take an an additional nap earlier inbetween, around 4am maybe.
Steve did it as well, so I thought it might be a good idea. Splitting it up a little bit might help the body to adjust to the night times better.
And as soon as that would happen, I could try to remove that extra nap from my schedule.

Alright, I walked back again, almost falling into some bushes a couple of times because I had micro-sleeps WHILE WALKING! Can you believe it!?
--intermission start--
How do the successful polyphasers get through SUCH tiredness!? I just can't seem to find anything to keep me awake during Zombie-mode at all.
Not even exercise seems to help. *sigh*
--intermission stop--
Well, I finally got back home and took the nap at 4am.
And then *BAM*... woke up at 10:20am, effectively oversleeping 6h 20min.....
I just wanted to cry, it was unbelievable, how in the hell can I get through this !&%$#ing lump of hellish Zombie-time?

Can any successful polyphaser out there give me some advice or tell me their "trick"?
I watched vlogs from 2 other successful uberman polyphasers, but they just seemed to pull through that phase "somehow".
You see, my problem is not my determination or willpower. I can stay awake, no problem. I just seem to oversleep after that, no matter what...

...Hmmm ...Well while writing this I guess I answered my own question.
All the time I didn't have any problem either falling asleep or waking up from naps, so I didn't thought about these two as problems and therefore they vanished from my brain.
I thought my problem was the Zombie-phase, because I perceived that as really, REALLY hard to get through.
But since I got through that phase 2 times already and still failed because I overslept after these phases it SHOULD've been obvious to me immediately that my lack of preperation to wake up after THESE naps was my problem.
Since I already thought I didn't have any problems there earlier I only concentrated my thoughts on making the Zombie-phase more comfortable and more easy to get by.

I see now that getting by that seems to be the lesser of two problems (even though it's still torturous as hell...).
Ok then, I still don't want to give up, I WANT this to work, I WANT the extra time, and I WANT to be refreshed, awake and alert after EVERY nap in the future, not just the daytime ones!

I think - judging from my last oversleeping experience - that I won't have any problems the next nighttime since I got some bloody "core sleep"... *hmph*
But the next night (DAY 7, i.e. tuesday) will probably be first Zombie-mode, followed by oversleeping.
So I have to prepare for that. I HAVE to wake myself up after that nap somehow.

But I have to admit that I'm a little bit afraid. I mean, let's assume I somehow manage to get up after the 6am nap.
Will I still feel like a Zombie? Will my eyelids still flutter, while I walk like a drowsy drunk?

To sum it up, it will probably go like this:

1. After the 2am nap on DAY 7 -> have to get through zombie phase ONE (torture)
2. get awake somehow from the following nap at 6am (not controllable through willpower alone, but external factors like water-shock)
3. and THEN I'll probably have to get through a SECOND Zombie-phase! (Do I?)

Oh my, that really doesn't sound like fun at all. And my problem is that motivation is getting more and more scarce, since I have no idea if it will fade during the day. How long can it prolong?
Any insights, tipps, advice would be greatly appreciated by anyone who successfully got through this phase!

Thanks in advance!

Greetings,
Edward

[dharmajanitor]

Alright, I have a battle plan!

I really want to get through this, I know it can be done and I want to achieve this, no matter what!

So I brainstormed a little bit to find out what I could do to make the Zombie-phase a little bit easier. It wasn't a problem to get through that phase, mind you, but it sure as hell was torturous. And if I can at least ease it up a little, then I wouldn't mind to have 2 of these phases (one before 6am, one after 6am).

Some on the list will be very obvious, even w/o brainstorming, but I put them all together for the sake of completeness.


Before my 2am nap:

• Take multi vitamin; maybe that helps with my energy levels after the nap?
• Eat Omelette; an hour before the nap; Protein

During Zombie-Phase:

• Take a cold shower; preferably a contrast shower (hot...cold...hot...cold...)
• Drink cold water; preferably ice cold, as in "with ice cubes"; I read sometime ago that drinking cold beverages as opposed to hot (or normal tempered) ones will (at least in the mornings) help you get awake more quickly
• Do pushups; but only around 5 and only every 10 minutes for a short energy burst
• Listen to fast music; and ONLY fast music, but not too long or you'll probably get used to it :P
• Eat some crackers; not sure about this, but my thought is that maybe getting the digestion going, not matter how slow at the nighttime it might be, will lead to some additional blood circulation? As I said, not sure about this one.
• Chew bubblegum; because of the continuous movement of the jaw while chewing and the contraction of its muscles this will help keep the blood flowing in your head and helps the brain stay focused; this is a very good method for exams, believe me it works!
• Eat a Fisherman's Friend every now and then; preferably one of the really strong variety; "What's a Fisherman's Friend?" you might ask: Fishermans Friend - Strongest there is.
• Eat tomatoes with pepper and salt; preferably cocktail tomates; tomatoes and pepper contain tyramine, which is an "amino acid that causes the release of a brain stimulant called norepinephrine, that can keep us wired all night long".
• Go outside; many reasons for that, but most importantly: oxygen, no bed

Preferably I'll do all of the above (except for showering) outside.
Cold water in a thermos and the pushups on an abandoned parking lot.
And the stuff to eat... well, I guess it'll be a zombie picknick.

6am Power-Wakeup Helpers:

• Sleep on floor or chair; Lying on my bed at this time even with clothes and w/o a cover WILL promote oversleeping, especially after a zombie-phase
• Set first alarm clock
• Set 3-4 iPhone Alarms*; only 1 minute apart; preferably with the dreadful "Alarm" alarm-sound
• The same with my cellphone

And of course all of them out of reach of my self-conscious having-their-own-agenda hands.

*On my iPhone there's an alarmsound that's exactly the same as the ringing sound when somebody calls. Maybe I'll use that as an alarm-sound as well.
This way I can trick my unconsious mind to think somebody is calling me. That generally gives me another mental cue to wake up .....eeeevil.

Ok, that's everything for now, if I come up with something else I deem successful or worth mentioning I'll add it to the list with a respective edit reason. Apart from that, if you have any ideas you think are worth trying, don't hesitate to mention them.

So long,
Edward

P.S.: Wish me luck!^^
----------------------------
EDIT:
Maybe I'll compile the list and print it in large letters, like...

1. Turn on the music!
2. Take a cold shower!
3. Drink ice cold water!
4. ....
.
.

Since I'm mentally at my lowest (in zombie-mode), it might be good to have a step-by-step printout that tells you what to do next.
That way I don't get confused as to what I have to do next and won't forget anything. And what's more: I won't waste time thinking at all, but just obeying my precious sheet of paper... like a real mindless zombie!

----------------------------
EDIT 2:
DAY 7 - Jul/07/09
For all who didn't read my first post in this thread: I define a day as the 24 hours from sunrise to sunrise of the next day.
I.e. this day began for me after my at 6am on Jul/06/09.
As I've overslept the last nap (6am-6:20am) on DAY 6 (and thus the first one of DAY 7) I took my next available nap (which was at 2pm).

• 6am: Overslept - see post for DAY 6
• 10am: Still oversleeping (until about 12pm).
• 2pm: Feeling pretty refreshed. But no wonders here. After all I had an involuntary core sleep.
• 6pm: Took a while to fall asleep, but I woke up from a dream, so it was pretty ok. Felt alright.
• 10pm: Was a little easier to fall asleep, felt normal afterwards, but was getting a little tired later in the evening.
  I also prepared myself for the possible zombie phase after the 2am nap. But since I just had a core sleep I don't really expect
  the zombie phase this day. The last time it needed an extra day after the core sleep.
• 2am: Felt the most tired here of all naps, as always. But not overwhelmingly difficult.
  As I've already presumed I didn't get into zombie-mode, but I used the opportunity to make a test run of my step-by-step
  anti-zombie plan and it worked pretty well.
  I can't wait till tomorrow and get this damn zombie phase behind me. Feel like I'm standing still until I get through that.

[dharmajanitor]

I just was remindend that I can't edit any of my older posts and that editing my current posts isn't possible after 1440 minutes without consulting the admin.
Because of this I'll wait from now on until I have a full day cycle of events, and THEN post them.

Continuation of DAY 7 - Jul/07/09

• 6am: I was a little tired after getting up from this nap, but nothing I couldn't handle.
• 10am: First a little drowsiness after waking up, but normal within 2 minutes after that.
• 2pm: Same as before.
• 6pm: Looked forward to this nap, since I got really tired around 5pm.
• 10pm: Felt relaxed, but nothing special.
• 2am: Now what do you say? I woke up and... NO zombie-mode whatsoever! I felt tired, alright, but far from zombie-land.
  I don't know what to say, this hasn't happen before now. The last two times I failed, it took only two days until zombie-mode was there again.
  But this time nothing! Hmm, I don't trust the situation though. I'll be extra cauious regarding my waking up for the next nap.
• 6am: Alright, since I was getting tired by the minute before this nap, I could already imagine that IF I'd still get a zombie-mode today
  it would be after the 6am nap. I successfully prevented oversleeping, although it wasn't really that difficult, I got up from the first alarm.
  But then zombie-mode kicked in and still lasts while I'm writing this.
  
  If there'd be two types of zombie-mode, type 1 being the superior, brain-blending, more difficult one and type 2 the milder version,
  then I'd definitely have the milder type 2 version, i.e. I have to fight against my eyes' urge to close all the time, but it isn't too great of a struggle.
  Even doing push-ups, though, don't seem to ease the situation.
  So maybe I'll go outside in a few minutes, it has rained a while ago and I like the cool air and the smell after that.

Anyways, this concludes DAY 7 with no slip-ups, yay! See you after the conclusion of DAY 8.
So long,
Edward

----------------
EDIT:

DAY 8 - Jul/08/09

• (6am: see DAY 7)
• 10am: Was still a little bit tired, but not more than my current average since I began this schedule.
• 2pm: Actually was very wide awake until around 3pm, but then it dwindled down from there to the average tired feeling again.
• 6pm: Nothing special, periodically getting tired then more alert, then tired again, etc.

Note: From now on I'll only update my status if something out of the ordinary happens.
Since I leveled out at a bearable tiredness throughout the day now, it doesn't make sense to report the same everytime.
But I'll definitely post how my nights will go, because they're still "dangerous" in terms of zombie-phases.
And also as soon as I feel any improvements in overall alertness and ability to concentrate.

To sum up my schedule again which worked for me so far:
2am, 6am, 10am, 2pm, 6pm, 10pm
-> 20-22 minutes each

Got 2x through zombie-phase through sheer willpower, going outside and excercise, but also overslept the nap after that two times.
=> Ergo: Tried to establish a plan to (a) ease the zombie-phase and especially (b) wake up after my 6am naps no matter what!

(a) Since I got through the nights w/o any "zombie sighting" whatsoever this plan didn't really come to pass yet
(b) This plan though consistet of 3 alarm clocks, all outside of reach of my hand PLUS a prewritten ToDo list what to do after waking up.
This way I didn't need to think, but merely do everything step-by-step the list told me to.

[dharmajanitor]

Hey folks,

just want to let you know that I'm still here and that I didn't vanish into the nether of fail.
It's DAY 15 now and one significant change is that from around DAY 10 on I didn't really have these periodic zombie modes anymore.
Between 2am and 6am I was always dead tired and struggled to stay awake. But this did only happen every 2-3 days.
Now during this time, I feel like I felt between 10pm and 2am when I still was a monophasic sleeper, i.e. feeling awake, but mellowing; responsive, but not fully alert.

I overslept only once during these last 7 days, but only for 3 hours (instead of my 6 hours before^^). That didn't have a long term impact though, not even days after.
To the contrary, I believe this even helped me regain some "sleep-juice" I've lost due to accumulated sleep deprivation so far. And since I continuously rigged my body up to that point, getting right back into the naps wasn't difficult at all.

I still have to struggle to stay awake from around 7-10am, but that's far from zombie mode. And right after my 10am nap it's always going upwards.
I guess I'm over the biggest hump and form now on my body just needs time to fully acclimate, so that my awarness in each cycle throughout the day equalizes to the standard level I had on my monophasic schedule. "Smoothing out the edges" you could say.

I have to add that maybe I should've started this experiment during winter, since now it's ridiculously hot, which - more often than not - was the reason for my oversleeping. See, normally you're not supposed to tuck yourself in when you take a nap as not to raise your body temperature too much. It DOES help you to sleep, but it hinders you from gettin up easily. And because it's so damn hot here it somehow doesn't matter if I wrap myself in or not, since it's too hot either way.
Air conditioner FTW!... Yeah, if I only had one.

So if you want to start this schedule, better do it when it's cool at night or have/build yourself a damn good cooling system.

Ok, so far so good, I'll keep you posted as soon as there's something worth mentioning again.
Thanks for "listening", until next time!

- Edward

[deathsushi]

Hey all,

I recognize that some people don't regard polyphasic sleep as the same as biphasic sleep, but nevertheless, I haven't been able to find any thread for biphasic logs, and I think that it's still worthwhile to post our own experiences.

My own story is that I'm starting Law school in the Fall, and have a number of activities that I would like to be able to continue to pursue while I manage my time to study effectively.

While polyphasic sleep sounds very compelling and interesting, I'm not willing to sacrifice my ability to hang out with friends for longer than three hours (or for that matter, to do ANYTHING for longer than three hours). I know that Steve discovered that he could stretch one nap to about 6 hours, but this is still a stopgap at best.

In order to accommodate my desire for more time, but still be able to have a social life, I've decided to experiment with biphasic sleeping, taking a core sleep at night, and a 90 minute nap during the day. This effectively reduces the amount of time that I am sleeping from 8 hours to 6 hours. An additional 2 hours every day should be sufficient for my goals, while not forcing me to sacrifice too much of the things I enjoy in a "monophasic society".

I've been blogging the experience here: Biphasic Sleep Journal - Week One - Adam's House o' Fun but am reproducing the first week's journal here for those that are interested. So far the experiment has been a success, and my body has very quickly adapted to the change in sleeping pattern; I suspect that this has to do with the fact that I am still making use of its natural 90 minute sleep cycles, rather than trying to train an entirely new way of approaching REM sleep (as is the case with polyphasic sleepers, training their body to hit all the phases of sleep in 20 minutes).

--Adam

Read on:

Bi-phasic Sleep Journal - Week One

Started: August 17

Day 1 (Monday)

Discussed options with Bay, and agreed that going to sleep together was something we wanted to maintain. Went to bed at 11:00 with Bay, and set my alarm for 3:30, aiming for 4.5 hours of sleep (three intervals of ninety minutes each). Woke up around 1:30ish, went to bathroom. Checked clock to make sure I'm on track, and fell back asleep. Woke up again at 3:20, checked alarm, went to bathroom and got up.

Took me a little bit of time to get into gear. Worked out, reviewed e-mail, completed a task off my TODO list and started on another, this time reviewing and learning about AppleScript.

8:00

Starting to get a little bit sleepy. Going to head out of the house to attempt to snap out of it. Yawning.

-Nap-

Fell asleep quite easily, and napped for the full time. Woke up at one point and realized I had been dreaming. This had occurred within less than 30 minutes, as my iPod was still playing and I'd set it to shut off in 30 minutes. This is the first time in my experiment that I've actually felt compelled to fall back asleep after getting up.

Day 2 (Tuesday)

Went to sleep with Bay at 11, and stayed up until around 11:20 talking. Set my alarm for 4 to give myself 10 minutes to fall asleep and then 4.5 hours from then until I needed to wake up. Alarm went off at 4 (I didn't wake up naturally before it this time), but it was quite easy to get up. I had obviously just finished a sleep cycle, as I was able to rise out of bed fairly quickly and didn't feel groggy. Brushed my teeth, worked out, and started on a few projects. It's now 6:00 and I still feel pretty on the ball.

Have not been yawning today, though it is now 12:30, and I can tell that my body is starting to prepare itself for a nap. My eyelids feel just slightly sandy.

-Nap-

Again fell asleep easily. I noted that I was partially aware of myself falling asleep, much like yesterday. Perhaps this is the doorway toward lucid dreaming.

I woke up briefly at 4:00 to check my alarm, out of fear that I was sleeping through it but this turned out to be baseless. Went back to sleep and woke up again at 4:23, and then got back to my routine. The most annoying part about sleeping is how greasy my face feels when I wake up - easily remedied by washing my face, still, annoying.

Otherwise I feel fully awake and refreshed. So far I'm enjoying biphasic.

Day 3 (Wednesday)

Again went to sleep at 11, aiming for consistency. This was probably the hardest time waking up yet. It wasn't really hard per se, it was just difficult to drag myself out of bed. I think I may have been in the final stages of REM sleep, as I was in the middle of some kind of imagery when my alarm went off. The biggest thing I miss is that feeling of waking up from 8 hours of sleep. However, I suspect that that may just be a mental thing, rather than an actual physiological thing. Based on my performance (physical and mental) I don't think I'm actually accumulating sleep debt, though that will remain to be seen toward the end of this week when I will feel most inclined to sleep in.

-Nap-

Falling into bed for the scheduled nap felt relaxing as always. I slept fairly soundly, waking up briefly before falling back asleep again, and woke up 10 minutes before my alarm went off - usually the indication of the end of my sleep cycle it seems.

Interestingly, when napping, I am usually much more aware of the process of me falling asleep, this time remaining conscious throughout the process of my limbs twitching a little bit prior to actually falling asleep. Again no trouble waking up, but I sure do hate the greasy feeling I have on my face whenever I take a nap. I've established the following routine upon waking up from a nap: brush mouthguard, brush teeth, wash face with cold water. This process is a familiar routine and helps get my mind back into the state of wakefulness. The cold water on my face feels great and refreshing.

--Continued on next Post--

[deathsushi]

Day 4 (Thursday)

I got up easily, but am finding it fairly difficult to stay focused and awake an hour later (5:00AM). This is the first morning where I have started things off by working out. I've made tea and starting off with some cognitive tasks - we'll see how things go.

After the rough start for the first hour, I'm back on track. The tea may have helped, or it could have been sitting down and doing something that demanded interaction and attention (today that was playing Super Street Fighter 2 - the previous three days it was working out). One thing that I find really nice about sleeping biphasically is that I no longer need to stress out about getting to bed too late.

Typically the amount of sleep that I get would be tied to when I get to bed, as I would not be able to sleep in past my alarm, which I would set to go off to give me enough time to wake up, get ready, and head out the door for work or school. With biphasic sleeping, since I'm typically getting up four hours before I would need to leave for work or anything, I have tons of leeway to stay up a little later than I would normally, without it impacting my ability to get the 4.5 hours that I need for my core sleep.

Being up early has dramatically improved my ability to devote some time to things that I've wanted to accomplish previously, such as dancing - it's pretty easy to book an hour of practice when I don't have any other demands on my time, so that's what I've been doing from 6:00 - 7:00 in the morning.

Day 5 (Friday)

It's getting easier to wake up in the morning, but getting up from the nap can still be a little bit frustrating, as I'm not used to the usual feeling of 'restarting the engine' in the afternoon that comes from waking from a nap. This weekend will be a good test of the biphasic sleeping pattern, and seeing how it fits in with the rest of my life. I have a bit of a dualistic nature when it comes to activity. During the week, I'm very focused on tasks, exercise, and a well-timed schedule. On the weekends, I love hanging out with friends, socializing, partying, and letting things flow in a manner that is much less regimented. Probably most significantly, while I still aim to get the right amount of sleep (I truly believe that getting good rest, drinking lots of water, exercising, and stretching are the closest you can get to a fountain of youth), the times I go to sleep are completely contingent on whatever I end up doing on Friday and Saturday. If I'm going out to the bar (rare), or heading to a friend's place for drinks, it's quite likely that I may not actually get into bed until 2:00AM the next morning. In the past, as long as I made sure I woke up around 9 or 10, I would get enough rest, and not lose my entire day (is there anything worse than sleeping in to noon? I hate doing this).

I'm heading out to a hiphop show with Brooke, Jo, Piper, and Jesse tonight at Plan B (WTF), and suspect that this will lead to a late evening. My intention is to act no differently than I normally would. If biphasic sleeping does not allow me to do the things that I normally would, it isn't going to be a useful thing for me.

-Nap-

Nothing specific to report about my nap today, other than to state that the worst part of biphasic so far is definitely having to go through the waking process a second time every day. When I say waking process, I mean, opening my eyes, shutting off my alarm, getting out of bed, brushing my teeth, cleaning my mouthguard, washing my face, and having something to eat to get things rolling.

The good news is that this is really the only bad thing I can say about it, and I absolutely love the way I feel the rest of the time. My energy levels are more consistent, and I feel motivated and energized throughout the day, rather than experiencing surges of energy at specific points during the day, followed by periods completely lacking in energy. Getting up at 3:30, which sounds utterly disgusting without any context, is awesome when you consider that I wake up easily and feeling fully rested, and then have three hours within which I can work on whatever I like before I even need to start thinking about getting ready for work, school, etc.

Day 6 (Saturday)

So, I had a good night last night, and after Plan B, we went to The Mint to hang out for a bit and chat before finding our separate ways home. I would elaborate more on the night, but this is a journal related to biphasic sleeping, and not a blog or a Facebook status update, so I'll stay focused.

I got in at 2:00 AM this morning, and I usually need about a half hour to wind down prior to being ready for bed. Additionally, I had been drinking at the club, so I was a still a little tipsy when my head hit the pillow at 2:30 (I did, however, make a point of drinking two large bottles of water, as I always do, to ensure that I didn't wake up feeling de-hydrated). I set my alarm for 4.5 hours later, and at 7:00, got up out of bed, once again, feeling refreshed and ready for the day. Honestly, I was pretty amazed. I figured that being out and getting to sleep later would have a detrimental effect on the whole system and play havoc with my new sleeping pattern, but it integrated perfectly.

The thing that I find fascinating is that the only real requirement here is that I get 4.5 hours of core sleep at some point before the next day. With a monophasic sleeping pattern, the main requirement is that you get 7.5 hours of sleep before you get back up. If you go to bed later, that's acceptable, provided that you stay in bed long enough to meet this requirement. You can then reset your sleeping pattern by going to sleep at a reasonable hour the following night and getting 7.5 hours again. Biphasically, it's the same thing. I just need to make sure that I get 4.5 hours of sleep during my core sleep, and can then reset again by taking my nap at the usual time, and going from there.

So, remarkably, I was able to go out to the club, have some drinks with some friends, come home, go to sleep at 2:30, sleep for 4.5 hours, and then wake up ready to go about my day as normal at 7:30 the next day. Pretty incredible isn't it? There is one drawback to combining inebriation with biphasic sleeping, and this is that instead of having eight hours within which my liver can process and extract the alcohol from my blood, it only has 4.5 hours. If you're in the habit of large and frequent drinking binges, you'll be able to wake up fine, but you're probably going to get out of bed and walk straight in to a wall. Then again, if you're in the habit of frequent drinking binges, you're probably not the sort of person that is particularly keen on being productive and hacking your life and your sleeping patterns like I am.

-Nap-

I met up with Davin and Jay this morning for breakfast (after being up for 2.5 hours), and then hung out and played Magic with them. After they left, I took my nap at 5:00PM, and then woke up, got ready, and headed out with Dan and Kellie for some drinks and conversation (great day!). Fall asleep for my nap has consistently been easy so far, and once again I woke up just before my alarm went off. After finishing up at the Bent Mast, I came home, tidied things up, and then went to bed at 1:45AM.

Day 7 (Sunday)

The end of the first week of my experiment! My alarm woke me at 6:30, and I got straight up out of bed and started the day. One of the things that I absolutely love about this sleeping habit is that I no longer feel like a slave to my sleeping tendencies. I recognize how cheesy that sounds, so let me try to explain. Normally on the weekends, I would go to sleep whenever I was ready to, and then set some time that I wanted to get up. I would try to ensure that I was getting 7.5 hours of sleep, but if I went to bed at 2:30 (I really enjoy getting stuff done late at night on the weekends), I would usually aim to arise at 9:00 in the morning, which meant I would only get 6.5 hours. In these cases, one of two things would happen: I would hit the snooze button 6 or 7 times before I was finally able to tear myself out of bed, OR, I would groggily pull myself out of bed and spend most of the day with low energy levels and require caffeine to rev myself up (which would then lead to further spikes in my energy levels).

[deathsushi]

Now that I'm sleeping biphasically, this cycle is shattered. The first key is that I am always aware of what time I go to bed, and what time I need to get up in order to ensure that I get three full cycles of sleep (at 90 minutes a cycle, that is 4.5 hours). By doing this, I'm ensuring that I never have my alarm go off and wake me up in the middle of REM sleep, and this is the situation that leads to you feeling completely blindsided when that alarm goes off. Getting woken in your REM sleep is the worst thing that you can do, as it robs you of the most important part of your sleep, and precludes your body from going through it's natural process of gradually coming out of that deep, deep slumber. Even if I stay up late, I don't need to worry about sleeping in through my day; even if I don't get into bed until 4:00AM, the latest I'm going to get up is 9:00 the next morning (allowing myself 30 minutes to fall asleep, and then 4.5 hours of actual sleep). I know this sounds ridiculous, but I actually feel like I've leveled up. Being in control of my sleep, and not the other way around, is amazing.

This is a significant discovery for me, and I think coming to this conclusion is enough reason for me to adopt and maintain this habit beyond the end of the experiment (which will be over in two more weeks).

Although initially I was concerned that having to nap would play havoc with my scheduling, it has not been an issue so far. So far I have been able to shift my nap as needed within about a four-hour window, which is quite a lot of leeway. I would not want to leave my nap much later than this, as I would start to feel a dip in energy (though probably less so than the middle of the day on a monophasic sleep schedule), and I would be pushing my nap and the next phase of my core sleep pretty close together. To really remain consistent, it is ideal to have your nap half-way between your previous and next core phases of sleep. I currently am not working (taking the time off to prepare for the Fall, when school will start), so I have the luxury of a fairly open schedule. I will have to see how and when I can fit napping into my schedule come the start of school, but unless there is something drastic preventing me from doing so, I will be aiming to maintain this new habit.

This marks the end of my first week of experimentation with biphasic sleeping, and the end of the first set of journaling. Although I had originally planned to publish the entire journal at the end of three weeks, this starting to reach a good length, and I think it makes more sense to publish on a weekly basis. I will continue to keep journals for the remaining two weeks, so keep it locked if you find this subject matter interesting.

[EmeraldWolf]

Hi guys.

After reading tons about Polyphasic Sleeping i decided to start my own log/blog about it at Emeraldwolf.com

Today is actually day 1 and its quite different from what ive expected so far.

Oh and im trying the Everyman 3 hour core 3 20 minute nap version. I don't think im cut out for Uberman quite yet.

[EmeraldWolf]

Day 2. So far everything is very similar to day 1. Except a bit tougher and more tired. I now understand why so many people fail or give up early. Very tempting to just say: "screw this, this is crazy, im going to sleep". But this is also a test of willpower and endurance. NO QUITTING.

more detailed info in my blog.

[EmeraldWolf]

Day 3 and im sill kicking ! This morning was terrible. My eyes hurt pretty bad from the lack of sleep. But then after the 7am nap everything returned to normality and i felt pretty good. All in all im doing really well for the Adaption hell phase of the experiment.

[EmeraldWolf]

Day 5. Things are slightly improving. I think i may be seeing a light at the end of the adaption phase tunnel. I think a few more days and im good to go.